Google Search & Rescue

About This Book

My intent in these pages is to reveal the inner depths and hidden features of the Googling lifestyle, and to rescue you from the overwhelmed feeling of information overload. Actually, this book’s title has a double meaning: As Google rescues its users from a hopeless glut of online content, so does it save information from being lost in poor, wrongly worded searches. Google accomplishes that last part by providing many specialized features and tools, all of which are available to us, but many of which are not publicized much. Most people are unaware of Google’s most powerful and precise tools. Even in the core service — the Web search engine — Google silently and without hype includes features that, when known, make daily Googling faster, more powerful, and more targeted.

Most people are astonished when they discover these brilliant Google fea¬tures. Getting fast stock quotes or word definitions; finding shops in the local neighborhood; searching through pages in thousands of mail-order cata¬logues; finding files on government and military sites; locating certain file types; Googling over the phone; navigating search results without using the mouse; searching only the titles of Web pages; playing Google games at innu¬merable Google fan sites; plumbing the amazing Google Groups (one of the most remarkable reference resources in the world); using Google as a phone book; highlighting a word on any Web page and launching a Google search from that page; using the Google Toolbar to block pop-up ads . . . I could go on. And, in fact, I do for the next few hundred pages.

So, what is this book about? Without conceit, I can tell you that these pages are about your virtual life, your online intelligence, and your informed citizen¬ship in the Internet nation. Whichever translation of this book you are read¬ing, whatever country you live in, the beneficent informational power of Google belongs as much to you as to anyone.

Conventions Used in This Book

I despise conventions. All that walking; the bad food. Fortunately, that has nothing to do with the conventions used in this text, which are layout styles and typefaces designed to identify certain kinds of information. To make fol¬lowing along easier, this book is consistent in how it presents these items:

* Web addresses, also called URLs, look like this:

www.google.com

* When I use an unusual term for the first time, I italicize it.

* Google keywords appear italicized when embedded in text, and some¬times appear below a paragraph like this:

keywords google search

How This Book Is Organized

This book employs a new and startling organizational system by which words are gathered into sentences, which in turn form paragraphs, and the whole shebang is printed on pages. Just turn the page, and . . . more words! I’ve col¬lected thousands of the finest words in circulation, and strung them together in a manner that occasionally approaches coherence.

The book’s chapters are organized into five parts, as follows.

Part I: Jumping Into Google

The two chapters in Part I present a detailed look at Google’s most basic services — searching the Web from Google’s home page. Here you get an overview of the entire Google landscape in Chapter 1, and then delve into basic and advanced searching in Chapter 2.Throwing keywords hastily into Google is easy enough and delivers some¬what successful results. Studies have shown, however, that a surprising number of searchers are unsatisfied with the first page or two of results, and generally don’t look deeper than that. Indeed, searching page after page of search results is often a waste of time; it’s better in many cases to start a new search. That’s where search operators and other tricks come in handy. These advanced (but easy) features give you better ways to narrow your search, often making that second attempt unnecessary.

This part is not merely a summary. To the contrary, I get very detailed about search operators (they can improve your life, trust me), finding certain types of documents, the Advanced Search page, and individualized preferences. Don’t skim past these chapters if you know basic Googling! This part is stocked with tips and little-known facts about Google’s underpublicized features.

Part II: Taming Google

In Part II you discover image search, Google Directory, Google News, Froogle, and Google Groups. In addition, Chapter 3 covers the many ways in which Google can be used as an answer engine. An answer engine differs from a Web search engine by directly delivering basic facts instead of links to Web pages that might, or might not, contain the basic facts you’re looking for. Many people don’t realize that Google can dish out answers and facts in ways that make your information-stoked life much easier.

Chapters 4 through 7 are focused on the main non-Web engines operated by Google — the ones linked from the home page. Those other engines are Google Images (photos galore), Google News (an interactive global news¬stand), Google Groups (an archive of nearly twenty-five years of Internet dis¬cussion groups), Froogle (a shopping directory and search site), and Google Directory.

Part III: Specialty Searching

Part III goes somewhat farther afield to Google’s outlying services. Chapter 8, which discusses local searching with three relatively new Google services, is particularly important and interesting. The other three chapters cover spe¬cialty categories of Internet searching such as universities and government sites, each of which has a dedicated Google engine; the Google Answers ser¬vice, which delivers professional-level research for a small fee; and the sprawling cauldron of experimentation known as Google Labs. Google Labs contains the new services Google Video, Google Suggest, and Google Scholar, each of which is a distinct search engine.

Part IV: Putting Google to Work

Part IV starts by describing two ways in which Google can be put to work in uncommon fashion. First, and for many most importantly, Google can attach to Web browsers in various ways, offering one-click searching from anywhere on the Web. I venture to say that the Google Toolbar is the single most impor¬tant Google service beyond the basic search engine, and I strongly recom¬mend that you read Chapter 12. The second method of searching from afar is the Google Deskbar, which resides on your computer desktop, independent of the browser.

Speaking of the desktop, Chapter 13 explores Google Desktop, a major new service that allows users to search their own computers, Google style. Google Desktop requires an easy download and is free.

Gmail created more Google-related fuss than any other service to come out of Google in the last two years. There is good reason for all the commotion; Gmail provides a new way of tackling Web-based e-mail and offers a ton of storage. It works beautifully, and Chapter 14 explains all the ins and outs.

Finally, Chapter 15 illuminates the simple method by which site owners can put a Google search box on their pages and customize how search results appear.

Part V: The Business of Google

Part V is about Google’s business services, so it is mostly about advertising. Chapter 17 covers AdWords (a way of advertising to searchers using key¬words that relate to the advertiser’s products), and Chapter 18 centers on AdSense, a way for professional Web sites of all types to run Google AdWords ads and make money doing it. Before those productive chapters, Chapter 16 explains how Google trolls the Web for sites to include in its massive index, and how your Web site can get favorable treatment.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Part VI is almost all recreational. Chapters 19 through 22 take you all over the Web, trying Google-related sites developed by individuals who took advantage of Google’s standing invitation to build alternate search interfaces. Google’s index is available to any programmer, and some of the results are spectacu¬larly successful — improvements, even, on Google’s own pages. There are even Google-related games; if you’ve ever wondered what Googlewhacking is, head to Chapter 21. The book’s final chapter (and I won’t tolerate any high-fiving at the mention of the final chapter) points to sites and Weblogs about Google — even highly critical ones.
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